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About 2 years before this exhibition I had began collecting and binding fallen river red gum sticks from a dry creek bed in the Flinders Ranges. To brings out a bone-like quality in the sticks,  each stick was bound with crepe paper: this simple material has a bandage-like quality, manifesting a sense of wounded-ness and delicacy in each stick, revealing an overlooked preciousness. The act of binding, of touching ever single surface of each stick, close to the place in which they were found is an honouring of these beautiful yet overlooked drawings grown by a tree. I returned to the Flinders ranges earlier this year to collect and bind enough sticks to produce this version of tree bones. The tree bones are mounted on the dark surface of 2 curved walls, like ghostly bones revealed in an archaeological excavation.

stick bone-5 and stick bone-λ* have been double bound in white crepe paper, mounted on black velvet and framed in deep box frames to further acknowledge and elevate the preciousness of sticks. In their contained box they carry a sense of silence and isolation that recognises their disconnect from their ‘mothership’ — the tree on which they had grown.

The binding for all the ‘tree bones’ has been done in a way that honours and reveal the nodes and connection that had existed when the stick was a living entity, connected to a tree.

The collaborative sound work, stick voices, produced by sound engineer Brent Williams seemingly gives voice to the sticks in the exhibition space —  generating  a sense that the sticks are having a conversation. All the sounds in this work were produced by tapping, scraping or rubbing sticks.

*λ is the Greek letter Lambda

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SPREAD exhibition dates were: 12 November — 19 December  2015